News Child P May Be Decriminalised, Where's The Hope Now?

[DiamondBug]

This may not make perfect sense, because my heads a mess right now. I literally can barely cope with...

Just to clear a few things up, I wrote this when I was in a absolute shit storm, I've had 5 hours sleep in 3 days, I didn't even proof read it, I was just ranting, I never said that it was definitely going to happen, it's the fact it's been even suggested, that's the terrifying thing. When I hear about things to do with my past especially when I'm having a hard day, it makes everything a thousand times worse, I'm so depressed, I just sometimes need to rant. I didn't hear it from a tabloid or anything like that, a professor I know was talking about it this morning. With getting the photos removed, I've not looked for them so I don't know if they are still up and I wouldn't want to see them again, so I couldn't report them, the police were never involved with my attack and my therapist advises me against going to them, as he thinks it'll traumatise me more, because it would be highly unlikely anything would come of it.

 

[Suzetig]

I'm in a different place with this one, he didn't call for people viewing child pornography to be decriminalised, he suggested a custodial sentence for some offenders may not be the most appropriate response and may divert police resources from detecting more risky offenders.

In all honesty I agree with him. All indecent images of children represent a child abused, yes, but research shows a range of reasons for viewing indecent images and many people who view child pornography never go on to commit contact offences. For some offenders, it may be better to convict, monitor, register and engage in statutory rehab and therapy rather than putting them in prison where they circulate with other, more serious offenders and get socialised into more serious behaviours.

Yes I think that all child sex offenders must continue to be criminalised, what their sentence is, I do think that how that offence is disposed of in the legal system could be more negotiable for some.

 

[Gs172003]

I'm in a different place with this one, he didn't call for people viewing child pornography to be decri...

I disagree. The reason is? No child porn watchers, no child porn.

 

[Friday]

I wonder how much / if any of this is blowback from kids sending selfies of themselves?

It's a moderate problem over here, teenagers are sending pics of themselves in various states of undress to their BF/GF and upset parents are charging the other kid with either sending/receiving child porn. So perfectly normal kids are being slapped with sex offender charges. It's diluting the seriousness of actual CSA & CP charges, wasting police resources, and ruining lives of teenagers caught up in the letter of outdated laws & angry parents who are -IMO- abusing the system.

 

[Suzetig]

That's a very definite issue here - young person sends a nude selfie, next young person shares or shows it to someone else and can then be prosecuted for sex offences and registered as a sex offender. I'm not sure it's in anyone's interest to jail them?

I've also worked with people who have viewed child pornography because they couldn't contextualise their own abuse - as in couldn't make links to their own experience of abuse or know that it was possible to be abused in X way. Absolutely not ok, but knowing the individuals concerned they weren't predatory offenders looking to make contact with young people, they were actually very broken in their own right and prison was not the right place for them. Others knew there were images of them out there and wanted to see - and had to view other stuff while looking for their own. Still technically viewing child porn but i don't think anyone would suggest criminalising them?

Of course with no one watching there would be no demand, but saying every single individual who views child porn wants to reenact that with children is wrong. Yes the viewing in itself is an abuse of children and should result in conviction and some form of monitoring but a prison sentence isn't always the right way to deal with some offenders.

 

[Sideways]

@Suzetig - my understanding is that the UK has the same mens rea (intent) requirement with criminal prosecution that we have here - so, what was the person's intent when viewing the media?

It's handy, because if you can genuinely prove it was a complete whoopsy (mistyped into google), or the person was too impacted by their mental health issues to have the requisite legal intent, then the law can stand without nonsensical cases making a mockery of the intent of the legislature. I think kids exchanging sexts would often fall into this category, depending on the intent.

But my own view is that people do need to take more responsibility for what they're doing online. If you go to a website deliberately, you can't then claim "but my viewing was okay because...". Not having the personal context that you have may mean that I'm missing some important elements, but to me, is it okay for a person to sift through photos of serious criminal acts in the name of finding media of their own abuse? To me, that's not okay.

If I walk into a shop called "Real Murders Being Committed Here", and I see murders being committed, would it make it excusable in my case if the reason I went there was, say, to put context around a murder that I'd witnessed that left me with ptsd? No. My responsibility would be to call the cops on the joint. How is the website different?

Idk, I'd probably have to defer to the people who work with offenders and victims.

 

[Neverthesame]

I understand the idea, why spend money on nonsense?

On the face, it almost sounds fairly reasonable. Except...

When it comes to things like what was mentioned above. Teenagers making childish decisions with camera phones, naive parents publishing pictures of their kid in the bath with a soap bubble beard, not realising that not everyone who sees it will say "aww, how cute!".

The reasoning I read from this, was as a unexpected influx of historical sexual assault claims, stemming from Operation Yew Tree. With Jimmy Saville being successfully taken to task for his sexual assault on all those young girls decades ago. (Which is great. If he did it, the world should know. I don't care if it was ages ago, or that he's dead now. The guy was a piece of shit, he should be remembered as such. IMHO)

Something unexpected happened from this. Seeing the world give a shit about some girls no one knew, against someone whom alot of people held in very high regard. Has given alot of other people the strength and courage to speak up against similar scumbags. Because maybe now, someone will listen.
Maybe they will be taken seriously, instead of being automatically written off as a fantasist, or someone looking for a dishonest way to discredit someone over a vendetta.

So now reeling from the unexpected expense of money and time all of these claims are causing. They had to find a way to backpedal without slamming a bunch of older sexual assault victims face first into the dirt, or spending any more money. How? By raising the bar, ever so slightly, as to what qualifies as worthy of mandated prosecution.

As I mentioned in my previous post. This is coming a country that will prosecute anyone who says something sufficiently offensive on Twitter or Facebook.

While I don't disagree with the UK laws regarding hate speech, I don't hold their value above the laws governing child abuse. They could have found a better place to "scrimp some savin's".

 

[talon]

This may not make perfect sense, because my heads a mess right now. I literally can barely cope with...

From my own childhood experience my abusers were brutal and not in the least bit sick. A petition is a good place to start but not allowed to quote it here which is annoying as this needs highlighting and it's a sick trend. There are also plans to reduce the age of consent to reduce the number of highlighted convictions . I suggest you start a petition as you will have thousands of signatures in days. I would suggest you target who is promoting this sick change to the law

 

[Suzetig]

There are also plans to reduce the age of consent to reduce the number of highlighted convictions .

Is this in the U.K.? I can't find any recent argument for a lower age of consent - someone was castigated for suggesting such a thing a few years ago and hastily apologised, I'm certainly not aware of any plans to change the law?

 

[talon]

Is this in the U.K.? I can't find any recent argument for a lower age of consent - someone was castigat...

Yes the Gay movement are arguing that children are having sex 14yrs and younger so are wishing to change the law . Pink news has an article on this

 

[Suzetig]

Do you have a link? The only article I can find on Pink News is 8 years old, and one persons opinion in an online article hardly equates to "plans".

 

[asadafagahajakal]

@Suzetig - my understanding is that the UK has the same mens rea (intent) req...

Intent is big in canada too. My wife and i watched a documentary and one guy in it said he was prosecuted because of the REASON he possessed pictures of kids from clothing catalogs on his computer. Im just glad canada takes these crimes seriously, but we really have to stop protecting the predators so much. For crying out loud our sex offender registry isnt even available to the public. A single mom would have to request a vulnerable sector check directly from the partner she wants to shack up with, and the partner has every right under the law to not show the VSS. That pisses me off since i was raised by a single mom and either didnt have the means to check on her partners histories, or simply didnt care.